Various ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Peter Janke - plantsman AND designer

An
all-too brief trip to Germany recently. A chance to get some summer
sun during a singularly cool English summer, but to be honest, one
does not go to Cologne to lie on the beach. The main reason for going
was to interview Peter Janke about his garden (for House and Garden
magazine), which is actually a bit further north, just outside
Düsseldorf. I was staying in Cologne with Ina Sperl and her family –
Ina is gardening correspondent for the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger,
the regional paper. Though technically a freelancer, Ina has a
position in garden journalism that is now unknown in Britain, a
two-day a week job with a desk in the office!

Peter
practically has gardening in his genes, as his grandparents had a
nursery, his grandmother having been a notable breeder of cyclamen
(Germany has always much led in this field). He had to take over the
family business as a young man, owing to his mother being ill, which
meant that he never went through the long process of training
(university or apprenticeship) which is normal in Germany. Note for
the rest of us – you do not normally do anything in Germany without
a long training, even supermarket shelf-stacking requires a long and
arduous training (I am making this up, but you get my point). Peter
designs gardens professionally, for him it comes completely
naturally, “I had been growing plants and putting them together
since I was five, making funny little combinations as a child”.

People
who have a good design eye and are real plant collectors are rare.
Peter is one of these - “I try to bring together a collector's
garden and a designer's garden”. On his 14,000 m2 plot, he says he
has over 4,000 varieties, and yet as Ina had said to me over
breakfast that day “there is nothing out of place”. There is a
very strong sense of structure, and rhythm, but it is in no way
'formal' planting. “I like the idea of formal elements and natural
things” he says, and his planting is very much about getting this
balance - “we like formal landscapes but the trouble is people go
too far and have formal planting too, formality works best with more
naturalistic planting”. “I am fascinated by the Beth Chatto style
from the beginning but I have things she would hate, like clipped
shrubs.” Peter worked for Beth on and off for two years, an
essential training, and she was clearly a mentor, but I can imagine a
good-humoured argument or two between them over things like this.

One
of the key problems in planting design is keeping interest going
through the year, but Peter says “this is the trickiest part of
planting design...but I truly believe a garden should be for twelve
months, and comparing with fine art you can have a Claude Monet in
summer and a George Braque in winter if you do it right”. Peter is
very keen on using space twice over, such as experimenting with
layering, eg. late-developing plants which can allow for a ground
layer of small spring bulbs or low perennials first, eg, many
Zingiberaceae or having late emerging foliage from things like
Darmera peltata, or somewhat
smaller, the fernGymnocarpium dryopteris. with
bulbs or very early woodland perennials. Another thing he is doing is
testing different ways of cutting perennials down, pruning them
mid-season to get healthy new growth, e.g. Geum rivale “two
or three weeks later they look super”. He is trying to create
combinations that you can do this with, using astrantia, tellima,
onoclea, matteucia. In addition he says how “it is possible to have
a border which is full of bulbs and spring flowers then the picture
changes completely almost tropical in appearance with Tetrapanax,
Boehmeria and many others”. This 'tropical' look is something
which I have noticed a bit recently in Germany – where the real
exotic look possible in Britain is impossible (winters are a lot
colder) but often using large-foliage plants from the Far East, like
many Aralia, Boehmeria, Shefflera etc.

Walking
through the woodland area of the garden Peter tells me that
“variegation almost used to be a no-no, but now my attitude has
changed completely, I can appreciate that it can be very useful, in
very small quantities, it brings light into shaded places, and it can
be used to create some striking combinations, particularly good for
urban situations.”

It
is interesting to hear how Peter describes himself as being very
influenced by Karl Foerster (a writer, nurseryman and plant breeder
who was immensely influential in the early part of the 20th
century and who wrote extensively), “the antithesis of what I knew
in the cut flower industry, the use of plants which are not
necessarily flamboyant and colourful, he taught me to see plants in a
completely different way”. But we agreed between us that actually
Foerster's style today would be seen as relatively conventional.
Things have moved on – partly because his last major book, on
grasses and ferns, in 1957, has helped initiate a whole new more
naturalistic planting style.

I
remember a previous conversation with Peter, a few years ago, in
which we were comparing British and German gardening cultures in the
early part of the 20th century, and probably discussing
which was more influential. Peter said that he thought that German
garden culture had been almost irreperably damaged by the 1939-1945
war. Actually, there was a huge drop off in plant availability in
Britain too, a loss which carried on through the 1950s. In Britain
however gardening remained culturally important; in Germany, Peter
thinks less so, “we lost our German identity completely after the
war, in garden culture too, but now we are getting our garden culture
back.... the garden lecturers like Cassian Schmidt have done a lot to
change people's perceptions, and the fact that more and more private
gardens are open that helps a lot, started with groups of plant
collectors opening their gardens to show each other, now nearly every
city has an open garden gate event, it makes people work at their
gardens”.

Since
then, I have made contact with a member of the family of the artist,
Escher Bartning, who did many of the illustrations for Karl Foerster
(such as the phlox in that previous blog post – the delphiniums
were by her father Ludwig) from the 1930s to the 1950s, by which time
Foerster was living in the DDR (communist East Germany). Her niece
lives in Leipzig and still has many of the original watercolours (I
told this to a colleague in Berlin, whose response was “is that
where they are, we have been looking for them for years”). Recently
I was able to get hold of a whole set of Gartenschönheit, the
magazine that Foerster edited before the war. More on this in a later
blog post I hope, its a wonderful but also deeply poignant view into
a liberal, broadminded, modernist Germany, at a time when the
dominant political and cultural currents were going very much the
other way, and a cataclysm beckoned. I'll end with some of Escher
Bartning's covers for the magazine.

* * * * *
If you like this blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus
magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the
amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for
smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.

SUPPORT THIS BLOG

I write this blog unpaid (of course)
and try to do two postings a month, to try to provide the garden,
wildflower and plant-loving community with information, inspiration
and ideas. Keeping it coming is not always easy to fit into a busy
working life. I would very much appreciate it if readers would 'chip
in' (as we say in England) and provide a little financial support.
After all, you pay for magazines and books, and it is only for
historical reasons that the internet is free. Some money coming in
will help me to improve quality and frequency, and to start to
provide more coherent access to hard information, which I know is
what a lot of you really want. So – please donate now!! You can do
this through PayPal using email address: noelk57@gmail.com

3 comments:

What a wonderful garden and those photos are so inspiring. I think for me finding the balance between plant collector and amateur 'designer' got lost over the past two years and I want to 'reclaim' the design back in my own garden. What I particularly like is that Peter keeps a little bit of formality to his design - that's me too.

I'm aware that you've written before on Peter's garden (Gdns Ills) so I'll be so interested to read this new article in the future.

You do meet such interesting people NoelIt was music to my ears that some people are starting to recognise the value of variegation.I have been particularly keen on methods of extending a garden's seasonal interest all the year round. That is proper gardening.I love methods of using the same space twice or more - with permanent perennials normally but self seeding and even bedding into spaces have their place.

12 month interest is a necessity, and I do it with trees, shrubs, groundcovers, bulbs, a few perennials, and some self seeding annuals. Deer are a huge problem, USA.

Clients rarely ask for the type of garden in this post anymore. In addition to deer they seem to intuitively know they won't alot the time needed to maintain it, and paid maintenance, qualified, rare & expensive.

Sadly, since 2008 many growers/wholesalers have gone out of business. Diversity of plants available is mostly of the 'commercial' sort. Some plants I've designed for decades are unavailable to the wholesale trade. If my contractor cannot resource plant materials within a group of 4-5 wholesale nurseries for a job, the unavailable plants must be changed to what is available. It's all about the money, and deer.

My grandfather was German.

Of course my dad had 2 great/great grandmothers, both, 100% Cherokee Indian. Hilarious was the day my dad, late in life, discovered he had more than a little French in him. He was never too fond of the French. He mellowed.

About Me

Garden writer and researcher, lecturer and teacher, based in the England/Wales border region. An occasional designer of plantings for gardens and public spaces.Other interests, and subjects for occasional publication are agriculture, food politics and environmental issues. Chiefly known for promoting naturalistic and sustainable planting design, I am a believer in design and decision-making based on science and evidence – so I have not signed up to organic jihad. And - lot of globe-trotting doesn’t stop me gardening myself either!
(pic. credit Andrea Jones)

Gardeners are underpaid. We all know that. They are also often not understood. All too often I have been involved profession...

COME STAY WITH US!

We are now doing Bed and Breakfast by arrangement, in the guest room of the Pavilion with a verandah overlooking the garden. Continental breakfast served in room. Complete privacy. 5 miles from the second-hand book town of Hay-on-Wye, on the Hereford Way and near Offa’s Dyke long distance footpaths. £60 per night. More info. and pictures here.

We also have a self-catering shepherd's hut with an attached outdoor kitchen area. Information here.

At home in the wild garden.

Research on Long term Plant Performance

Followers

Visitors since 18. January.2010

Total Pageviews

Welcome to the garden....

This blog is a place for observations, thoughts and opinions that occur to me as a gardener, horticultural journalist, researcher and commentator on the garden and landscape scene. And sometimes on the food and agriculture scene too.... when, you should be warned, I sometimes express unfashionable thoughts.

PLANT SELECTION: LEARNING FROM NATURE

The first in a series of e-books I'm planning with My Garden School

I'm now doing e-books.

I am now publishing e-books through Amazon, for Kindle, smartphones, iPads etc. There are currently three available, two based on collections of writings for Hortus magazine, from the early 2000s, and one which is an interview with Beth Chatto. Click here for Amazon North America or Amazon UK.

En Francais.

Interview

In February I went to Switzerland to do a lecture for the Swiss Hardy Plant Society (rather quaintly called the Swiss Friends of Perennial Plants). Here is the original English version of an interview he did with me. (you can see German and French above). Merci à Xavier Allemann.